I wouldn’t be surprised if they all live, just in case.
But they still need to proceed as if they’re done and give them an “end” rather than have their plots dangling.
I wouldn’t mind a Captain America 4. But I’ll also be happy if they end on a high note.

That makes them more wizard-like, me no like that.
How about a simple solution? if you want to give double the amount of sorcery points, then double the cost of creating a slot. It you want to triple the amount of sorcery points, triple the cost to create a slot.

Given them a certain number of uses of Metamagic each day for free and then sorcerery points. And let them use sorcery points to get more uses of Metamagic or more spells. They can burn spells to get more points (and thus more Metamagic) but they can't burn Metamagic for spells so their spells per day remains capped.

As others have said, this will be the last film for most of the Avengers for contractual reasons. So most of the main six (Cap, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Thor, Hulk) won't be seen again. They signed up for many, many pictures when they were far more unknown, and command much higher salaries now: even Marvel couldn't have made Infinity War if they were paying the three Chris-es their current average...

Stuff like the Barbarian camp on page 10, where half its rules reference another book that currently doesn't exist.
Only being a dozen pages and change into the book, this really jumped out and me and made me wonder how many other fun references and missing rules there will be, and how useable the book will be on its own.

Yeah, it's usually connected. But not always.
They had planned to set up The Next Doctor following Donna's departure, but felt it killed the sadness. None of the Smith specials were set-up by the previous episode (but a couple did pick-up fairly quickly afterwards... more or less). And the long breaks in seasons meant they didn't set-up the latter two Capaldi specials, just Last Christmas and...

Reading through, I'm a little irked so much of the rules seem held back for a forthcoming book available in a year or so IF the Kickstarter funds. Especially when half this book was an adventure...
Couldn't they have put all the rules in one book and then done the adventure(s) separately?

The finale was a bit weak for my tastes.
Again, Time Shaw just looks gross and not scary. And the "one cool thing" about his people (their bodies are super cold) doesn't come up. It's rare for individual villains in Doctor Who to be reoccurring rather than villainous species, and Tim Shaw just was not up to snuff to compete with the five or six "evil individuals".
Graham's character arc was...

Don’t forget that WotC made Basic D&D available via Print on Demand:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17171/DD-Rules-Cyclopedia-Basic?it=1
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/16989/DMR2-Creature-Catalog-Basic?it=1
If that’s your thing, all the power to you. I will support that. If it works for your table, then that is all that matters.
But if you want something Basic-esque but with a modern...

It might work well if you can set down some ground rules. So one DM isn’t handing out too much magic and so no one takes revenge for a bad previous session.
And maybe also have an idea for why the party is always changing. Maybe a task force that it sent on missions by a king or royal advisor, and so the needed team members shift. Or a mercenary company like the Superfriends, where only...

I think the sorcerer has the same problems as the monk, where they're mathematically balanced but don't feel as good.
Getting that extra cantrip and having the flexibility of metamagic just feels less cool than having the extra spells known that a wizard does. Even if 95% of the time, the sorcerer would be largely as effective as the wizard, who ends up preparing the same spells every day, and...

This is one of those big questions.
Because if you limit it to movies with magic and wonder, you exclude films like Home Alone and A Christmas Story. And stuff like Gremlins gets in.
If it has to involve Santa then you lose It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. But you allow Bad Santa and Rise of the Guardians.
If it has to be happy and wholesome you lose Nightmare Before Christmas...

You do know WotC doesn't publish the Endless Quest books, right? Those are licensed.
And funny thing... you know that generation of casual kids who watched the cartoon and read the EQ books in the '80s grew up to be the hardcore gamers of the 2000s.

Very true. I'd forgotten who took the shot.
It was a lovely fake out. Making you think he hadn't completely gone Dark Side and still giving you some hope throughout the movie, only to have him show that he was fully evil and irredeemable at the end.

Will 5e be the "last" edition of D&D?
Maybe.
It could very well be, as far as we define editions. If they do a 6th Edition or revision, it might be more akin to the 1e/2e split where the content is largely backwards compatible. 6th Edition could be a smaller tweak of an edition, with less substantial changes than we saw in 3.5e. Almost more of a repackaging of the rules with more attention...

Funny thing... Lego has made a LOT of blunders and had some terrible years.
https://www.businessinsider.com/legos-worst-failures-2014-2
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-lego-made-a-huge-turnaround-2014-2

It was odd but it made sense to me.
Sith and the Dark Side is driven by passion. They are literally fuelled by rage and anger and hate. They shouldn't be calm. And yet every other Sith lord we've seen has been a calm, collected badass who seems about as drive by passion as a Vulcan.
I can buy it with Vader. He seethed with a quiet rage. And did not hesitate to let it out. But Maul and Darth...

Yes, because JJ Abrams is the filmmaker we want answering questions.
Not really.
He killed his father in TFA, completing his journey to the Dark Side. TLJ had Rey question again if he could return, and instead he doubled down and slew his master so he and Rey could rule together.
He's far, far beyond the pale.
He literally spaced his own mom! What else does he need to do to be evil?...

The most gonzo idea I had that could be turned into a storyline is souls of the dead awaiting judgement, but being saved and given new bodies in order to fulfil some task threatening the planes. This requires these reborn adventurers to travel between realms, hunting down clues to whatever is stealing from the gods.
Basically the post-TPK adventure featuring dead PCs and also serving as a...

It’s a safe bet that there will be a pirate storyline in 2019.
And you can place money that at some point D&D will do a slavery focused storyline adventure based on that classic adventure. And eventually the gith vs mind flayer conflict will take center stage.
These are all pretty easy guesses for future storylines.
Then there are the wilder ideas. Expedition to Barrier Peaks. The Great...

Yet no amount of metamagic will turn a fireball into a familiar, it can't even turn a fireball into an iceball.
At least something.
But sorcerers used to be niche fillers, take a niche and fulfill it using magic. Not wizard substitutes, but a different way to do the rogue.
Because fans of the simple caster surely are in love with having it become the class for System Mastery.

After weeks of shipping delays, I finally got my two boxes of Spell Effects minis by WizKids.
Has anyone else picked these up?
I’m loving the idea. I’ve been thinking about several of these minis for years, as knowing where a Bigby’s hand is. Or the dancing lights. And the various weapons double nicely as spiritual weapons that totally need a mini.
Do you think they should do more?...

I've been asking for a "hacker's guide" that's all about homebrew, optional rules, and the like. And as a sneaky way of adding campaign setting content. But it sounds like they're adding campaign content via PDFs.
There's two books I really want. Which I want more varies depending on the time of day.
So Imma gonna cheat and say two.
Van Richten's Guide to the Horrors
192-pages
Price:...

Gnomes...
I think that's why Dragonlance (and Warcraft) tried so hard to make engineering/ tinkering a gnome thing. It differentiates them from being dwarves who live in hills rather than mountains and like illusions.
4e struggled with this as well, basically making gnomes small elves rather than small dwarves.
Really, most of the campaign settings do more interesting things with gnomes. As...

I agree. The Force Awakens really dropped the ball with that. We have no idea of the scale or scope. It's terrible, terrible worldbuilding.
Well, Poe is only a lead in the second movie, and has a tonne of character development where's humbled repeatedly and forced to be a leader.
Finn goes from being a mindless killing machine to a coward who wants to just run away to someone willing to...

It definitely needs a lot of work.
As others have said, its far too good at low levels, being much better than the fighter. Especially at level one where it gets a Fighting Style AND a Leader Style AND a Commanding Presence. Most 5e classes have a single small choice at 1st level, not three.
It also gets three attacks, which is almost a signature ability of the fighter. That's a bad idea....

It comes up, but they’re not really called either “dark Jedi” or “Sith”. Neither Ventress or Savage are given a title to their order, and neither is Maul.
As far as Snoke’s past go... again, we know more about him than the Emperor in the original trilogy. I don’t think learning how he became Emperoror really improved Palpatine much. The movies suggest much, but aren’t 100% clear.
And...

Jumping in late.
It tricky in that social skills work all the time with other non-player characters. So why not PCs? But, players in general have a hard time surrendering control.
Think about it this way: should a high Charisma monster be able to roll a Persuasion check and convince the party they're friendly? Should a trained NPC combatant be able to Intimidate a Player Character into...

Hoard of the Dragon Queen: Black and White for the two major dragon enemies.
Rise of Tiamat: Red and Green to round out the dragons.
Princes of the Apocalypse: Pick two from Brown, Blue, Red, and White.
Out of the Abyss: Purple and Green.
Curse of Strahd: Black and Red. The easy one.
Storm King's Thunder: Blue and White for sky colours and a certain surprise big bad.
Tales from the...

Honestly, what my son (currently 8yo) will probably be most nostalgic for regarding Star Wars won’t be any of those things.
It will be the Lego Star Wars shorts and series. Freemaker Adventures and Yoda Chronicles...

at
The author or the first link ranks Revenge of the Sith as their favourite,
I do think that in 20 years the 25yo who were introduced to Star Wars via the prequels might view them with the same nostalgia. And right now they might well enjoy those films like I enjoyed A New Hope prior to the prequels.
Because ANH isn't that good. Not on paper. It has terrible dialogue, poor pacing, flat...

I'm a child of the nineties. I look fondly towards stuff like Friends, Seinfield, Sky Dancers, the Dreamstone, and the like. Granted, I'm not that fond of the prequels, but being that fond of Star Wars after the 80's is not really feasible. The OT was groundbreaking and highly influential, but that is the problem, everything made after the OT is heavily influenced by it, where once it was a...

Fans of the prequels very much do exist:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/star-wars-youre-all-crazy/
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/4qhrq7/i_like_the_prequels_more_than_the_original/
https://metro.co.uk/2017/05/18/why-the-star-wars-prequels-are-much-better-than-everyone-thinks-6605636/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/actually-the-star-wars-prequels-dont-suck...

Sure.
But stuff like Ewoks and Jar Jar and showing Anakin as an 8yo boy is very much trying to sell the movies to younger kids. As was toning down the violence of the prequels by having the bad guys be robots and CGI bug men.
And a lot of these new fans might put movies like Revenge of the Sith atop the list, having more nostalgia and affection for it than A New Hope.

There’s a big difference between dietary health and getting them to enjoy a movie. You can’t force someone to enjoy a film or become a fan of a franchise.
Not anymore than I’m a soccer fan because my dad kept exposing me to games.

The problem I can see with this, is that a lot of characters have options that allow multiple attacks, so they might do something every turn. While other classes are build around saving throws and the like that are always effective to some degree.

Honestly, I think the views of this thread say more about how old we are here at ENWorld.
Here's the thing: younger Star Wars fans like the prequels. That was sometimes their introduction to the franchise and they have fond memories of those movies. The original trilogy can be cheesy at times, with weak special effects and really slow action scenes. A New Hope is really slow in the middle and...

I'm not part of that audience either and I'm okish with TLJ -enjoyed some of it, but not enough to want to get a copy at full price-. I know a lot about the old extended universe from second hand though -like about Mara Jade, Ben Skywalker, and someone dropping a moon on poor Chowie-. Perhaps I sit more in the middle of this, I can see what bothers many of them, but most of it doesn't bother me,...

The domain gains an extra skill proficiency at level 1; the 2nd level Channel Divinity lets you force creatures to drop held objects and not fall prone; the 6th level ability is completely different; Divine Strike does psychic damage instead of force, and the flavour of the effect of Order's Wrath at 17th level is made more apparent.

Be wary when taking spoken quotes completely literally. If it's off the cuff and not a prepared statement, human error can be a big factor.
Yes, he said "when" and not "if". Sure. But given enough time, almost every major setting will see some release as either a hardcover campaign setting or an adventure or a PDF on the DMsGuild.
And knowing that, you want to make things easier for...

Here's the thing, the FF have also had more bad runs in the comics than good ones. Most writers have little idea what to do with the Fantastic Four. They're hard characters to write and their plots are hard to present.
Because they're not super heroes. They're equal parts B-movie monsters that fight other B-movie monsters and a family of scientific explorers.
The FF were scientists that...

I think the chain yanking has a LOT to do with people not liking The Last Jedi. It spent a lot of its runtime zigging when everyone expected it to zag. We've been conditioned to expect certain things in these kind of movies over the last, well.... fifty years? Sixty? And this movie flipped the table each time.
Suddenly we're out of our comfort zone and unhappy.
(And then people complain...

When running 5e for my son, I've dropped proficiency for the optional proficiency die rule from the DMG. So he knows to make Str/Dex/Con/Int/Wis/Cha checks, saves, and attacks. It puts the focus entirely on those six boxes. But sometimes I'll tell him he can add his "proficiency die". It's more math, but he's not looking for "Athletics" or the like on the sheet. (And I'm okay with more math.)
...

I suppose more time has passed since the last bad FF movie than between Amazing Spider-man 2 and Civil War. Still, the FF are hard to get right. And they might work better if introduced in someone else's movie.

Can you think of a twist they could have done that the fanbase didn't think of in the two years between movies?
That would work and not seem crazy forced, overly complicated, or just create more plot hole.
Honestly, I think the "no revelation" was the only really surprising thing they could have done.
Because I heard it all: Luke's kid, Leia's kid, Obi-Wan's grandkid, Ezra Bridger's kid,...

There's also the mostly completed New Mutants film as well as likely a Deadpool 3 in pre-production. Plus the continual threat of a Gambit movie.
Meanwhile, Marvel is charging ahead with Black Panther 2, Eternals, and other projects.
I doubt they're really working how to bring in the X-Men and other characters just yet. Let alone with Endgame as the merger hadn't been finalised when it was...

I've described their method of teasing products as a "shotgun" method. There's all kinds of hints and clues just scattered about. There are the real clues that lead to the planned adventures, the clues they threw out because they might do a related adventure in a few years, the clues that are really just referential Easter eggs to past products, and the clues that are really just nothing but...

Maybe they were expanded in a Dragon article. (Or a forum post...)
Worked just fine for orcs and hobgoblins and goblins and drow.
And humans really. Since NPCs don't use the same statblocks and PCs. There's no reason a PC version has to be identical to the monster.
Heck, even in 4e they also did a dryad racial write-up. That would work just fine in 5e.
I'm just not a fan of some...

I know what they are. I just don’t think they were mentioned in the wilden in PHB3...
It takes roughly the same amount of lore to add details to an existing race to make them a PC as it does to make an entirely new race.
The stats would be the same either way.
The difference is a race that actually has a place in the world and isn’t poorly slapped on like an afterthought. ...

But, again, they're not connected to treants. Or wood woads. Or myconids. Or vegepygmies. Or dryads. Or tendriculos. Or volodni. Or twig blights. Or any of the other existing plant monsters.
Instead of enriching the existing lore and making an existing part of the world deeper the wilden are just slapped on. They're just there.
IIRC, they originally didn't even mention primal spirits in their...

They’re just entirely tacked on and unrelated to established lore and the dozens of existing plant monsters and floral humanoids.
They’re not “hey this is a humanoid shambling mound” or “an intelligent twigling/ vibe blight”. They’re just new and out of nowhere.
It’d be simmilar to if they wanted to make a new race of pure good outsiders and didn’t even remotely connect them to angels and the...

While things can (and possibly should) vary on a world-by-world basis, I don’t think D&D should eliminate any races.
That said, killoren/wilden are laaaaame and desperately need to be reimagined and tied to existing plant monsters...

I can’t help but think “gnomes” have sliiiiightly different cultural associations than elves and dwarves:
I mean, I love my gnome bard in 3e. But gnomes have always been an oddball race. There’s a reason they were dumped in 4e at the start.

I'm a bit more particular, having done a couple homebrew settings and really looking into the art of worldbuilding in order to do a blog series (that became a book).
It's pretty easy to look at official WotC settings and see awkwardness. Impossible rivers in Greyhawk. The tiny, tiny size of Ansalon in Dragonlance. Peaceful agrarian nations next to expansionist conquerors in the Forgotten...

I am very much shipping that big poly relationship. Esapecially after Rey met Poe.
But it won’t happen. Even thought China doesn’t give an eff about Star Wars, they’re still too big of a box office to upset with positive portrayals of homosexuality. Ditto most of Eastern Europe, Russia, and the like.

There are rumors and speculation.
I’m uncertain they’ll do three storyline adventures in a row, and the current AL season is running until next August. So maybe another accessory of some kind, another campaign setting, or a compilation adventure.
Who knows?

I was a blank slate when I watched TPM. I wasn't interested in SW at all before that point.Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson and Ray Park hooked me into SW. ^_^
I'm sorry but you are incorrect, Finn's one and true love is Poe. n_n

Really? I would have sworn it was like half an hour at least. At least the reality ensues at the end pays off. Del toro definitively sold it.
In fact I kind of like that part of TLJ, the crew constantly screwing up the million to one chances that Han and company routinely could achieve. That makes the original party more special by comparison. Honestly Rey, Rose, Finn and Poe are amateurs.

Tuesday, 27th November, 2018

What Jester David said. Let's not confuse outspoken forumites with the sum total of D&D fans.
I honestly don't get the complaints waged on Mad Mage - that it is a series of disconnected dungeon crawls, which can be used as a group or separately. What a great resource to have! You can A) Play the entire thing, as written, B) slot a level into your homebrew campaign as needed, C) Use it as a "Let's take a break from our usual campaign and dungeon-crawl for a session," or D) use it as fun bathroom reading. Etc.
What I really see happening is variations on "WotC is not publishing exactly what I want, so I'm going to be grumpy about it." The problem is, this is inevitable.
As for 4 books a year being too much...really? That's one book every three months. I don't think 4 books a year is an issue, but maybe they need to try to spread them out more evenly rather than having nothing for almost the first five months of the year, then a book, then nothing for a few months, then 3 books in a few months ti...

They didn't change anything from the original Advent module: more of a back-to-basics reboot, and returning to the original authorial vision.
OK, so the story I was familiar with and that Jester David described came from a later supplement / adventure?

Monday, 26th November, 2018

Jester David my point, again, is that it doesn’t matter if he is solely responsible for it. He could have turned it down, and he didn’t, thus my lack of surprise that he is doing a similar thing with this game.
I’m not even opposed to the game. I’m just saying it’s reasonable to voice mixed feelings about it.

Sunday, 25th November, 2018

Not quite. I have only looked at detail on the first level, and it has taken locations from the poster map, but has cut out a lot of the rooms and halls in between them. For instance, the Dry Well and Hall of Many Pillars is as previously detailed. But the 'cross' room with the curved hallway north of it has a bunch of rooms such as the Water Shrine between it and the Dry Well that are not drawn in the new maps.
Aye. Looking at Jester David's overlay I can see what you're talking about. That just makes it even more awesomely expansive if I wanted to use the original map, while still having a solid cohesive fleshed out dungeon level with the work done for me if I just use the book.

Monday, 19th November, 2018

I have not read the entire thread and neither have I looked at the link @Jester David kindly posted on the first page but I intend to.
From my own personal experience with Vampire - which was a casual player, and it has been a while, I loved how the designers incorporated RL history into the Vampire mythos with some being human machinations and others being vampire plots and dark designs. I thought that was creative and never for one second imagined any maliciousness from their side.
I bought the 13 dark ages novel books and enjoyed how they weaved human and vampire politics of the time with the Fall of Constantinople and the Dream sought by the vampire Michael (I think it was) and his followers/friends.
Vampire mythos has very much always accepted the LGBT, the entire process of creating progeny and falling in love with them (same sex or not) is a common troupe for the Masquerade. Furthermore you have these powerful supernatural beings that are ages old with their own moral compass, that could easily be out-dated and viewed as prejudiced today but that is the setti...

Jester David
That was a long an thoughtful post. I won’t quote it due to lebgth, but I’ll try and address the main points.
In my opinion, yes, commissioned works are art. Works produced with the intention of making money are art. I don’t mean this as a statement of quality...there can be impressive art and there can be uminpressive art. But that’s subjective.
And roleplayong games are also works of art, I would say. Especially for the purposes of how they are considered and critiqued.
As for your points about the target audience, yes of course work intended for children will have different standards than those intended solely for adults. I disagree with you that RPGs in general have some shared expectation of their target audience. I think that’s no more true than just about any other media. And I would say that Vampire: The Masquerade is firmly in the adult area.
I don’t think that the content in question was against some kind of rule or expectation on the part of the reader. I don...

Wednesday, 14th November, 2018

Really? I mean, really? Look, you obviously have some axe to grind. So, please start a discussion thread about it and leave those of us that want to discuss the topic of this thread to do so in peace.
Jester David started complaining about the absence of the artificer in this UA, not me. I just followed the path.
You should read the threads you post in before tagging other users legitimate opinions as 'crap'.
once you'll be polite you'll be left in peace.

Tuesday, 13th November, 2018

I am sure they are happy making informed decisions based on previous results.
that doesn't sound like a plan, at least not like a detailed one.
my position is more akin the one of Jester David , maybe they have a loose plan for a year, with the difference that I believe that on some topics/issues they are very late and stumbling. not on everything, just on something.

While I have not ran W: DMM, from reading the book, it seems like a DM could run it as an episodic TV show. Each level seems like it could be short enough for a single 4 hr session and besides Halaster each level has very little to do with one another.
So far each Dungeon has bad guys to beat via combat, but also contains many, many Role-Play oppertunities. Also in my opinion each Undermountain level, seems so modular that it could be used as stand alone dungeons for easy plug n play.
Jester David Looking forward to your reveiw on 5MWD.

Sunday, 11th November, 2018

the only place I see it harped on as a major problem is on forums like this and it's usually by a handful of 4e fans who are trying to convince others to be outraged enough about it to actually care as much as they seem to. The way that it came up in this thread was that a poster - Jester David, I think - said that the 4e system (of codified powers, codified DCs, etc) inhibited player choice.
I disagreed. Nothing in the intervenig 500 or so posts has changed my mind, because all the 5e posters seem to take the view that the examples that I have in mind as illustrating what 4e permits, and as thereby marking the difference between the systems (eg 15h level fighters cutting down phalanxes of hobgoblins (statted as swarms), the forge scene, etc) are properly not feasible in 5e (because even a 15th level fighter should be threatened if surrounded by 20 hobgoblins, should most likely have his/her hands burn off if shoved into a forge, etc).
I don't care whether or not anyone else wants to play a game in which 15th level fighters are capable in that sort of way. I'm simply explaining why the 4e framework makes stuff possible - encourages it, even - which the 5e framework does not. I want that stuff even if no one else does.
To put it even more bluntly - I'm not trying to s...

Wednesday, 24th October, 2018

Have there been a discussion on the topic of selling maps separately and charging nearly $25 for them already?
I think these are additional high quality maps. I believe the book still contains the maps it normally would. Also, as Jester David mentioned, it is something Paizo apparently does regularly - so it must be a good idea! ;)

Monday, 22nd October, 2018

"Ummm.... Magic the Gathering is repeatedly mentioned in the sample page we have, linked in the first post.
And Magic the Gathering is mentioned on the cover. It’s mentioned before D&D on the back cover.
And the name of the product on Amazon is: “Dungeons & Dragons Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica / D&D/Magic: The Gathering Adventure Book and Campaign Setting”
Arguing it is a Ravnica book and not a MtG book feels like arguing a Dragonlance product isn’t a D&D product.
It’s not a MtG card game product but it is very much part of the same brand"
Yep, as I mention in my response to Jester David (who made the same points you did, in fact did you copy his post or am I suffering from deja vue here), I made a mistake here. I just looked at the front cover and there is nothing about MtG there. I still think that is significant.

Monday, 8th October, 2018

Friday, 5th October, 2018

...us relative to each other hasn't changed. In other words, they ran the race, got to the finish line, but neither could claim victory over the other.
For RAW, we're working literally so pedantic is called for.
Say A and B get 15, C 12, D 11. You are saying that A and B crossing the line in equal first place is remaining the same as before the contest. That's a stretch, and the approach taken requires a house rule for cross-compares.
That is why I said with "approximately equal justice" above. It's no more of a stretch - no more of a house rule - to say that the generality of the DM decides the DC includes that the DM might decide the DC based on other creatures check. Pragmatically, that works equally well.
@pemerton I find myself not disliking your approach, but not seeing it as less a house rule or more justified than the alternative approach. Certainly I think finishing a race in any place does a poor job of remaining the same, unless all finishers tied! That said, I agree with @Jester David who suggests this is perhaps simply poor choice of words. When looking at RAW of course, choice of words is what we have and we can't make guesses about designer foibles. For RAI, sure. In the end, I don't think it matters who claims the high-ground because the case of multiple competitors is not clearly covered by the rules at all. Just the same as how far is further than your usual jump distance.
Instead, they've acknowledged diversity of needs and provided tools good enough for a DM to apply on the fly. I think that's what Mearls is getting at and why he is happy about their approach to 5th. I don't think he means ignore those tools (a possible implication), rather I think he means apply them as you need to, to resolve situations at your table.

Saturday, 22nd September, 2018

There is quality material out for 5E, but it has come out much slower.
I am sure that Jester David is aware that there is quality third party material for 5e given that he has, in my opinion, written some of it ;)

Wednesday, 19th December, 2018

Chris Evans has been talking about directing for some time. They might be tapping him to do some work behind the camera.
Or, you know, neither Disney nor Evans writes themselves into a corner & leaves it open to doing future Cap projects.
Just because one batch of contracts ends doesn't mean new ones can't be made.

Tuesday, 18th December, 2018

Stuff like the Barbarian camp on page 10, where half its rules reference another book that currently doesn't exist.
Only being a dozen pages and change into the book, this really jumped out and me and made me wonder how many other fun references and missing rules there will be, and how usable the book will be on its own.
I quite appreciate the future proofing of the book, knowing that when/if I buy the next book the two will be easily compatible.
Strongholds is entirely stand alone atm, as the rules he references can either be safely ignored or easily incorporated into your existing game. He is offering a mechanic for tracking something that is mostly a narrative thing anyway. eg the pirate ship can attack a port city and reduce its development* level. That is easy enough to hand wave as "much of the city was destroyed. The once thriving port if now a ruin filled with destitute beggars sifting through the rubble."
*AFB, this might be civilization level or something like that
The ...

Yeah, it's usually connected. But not always.
They had planned to set up The Next Doctor following Donna's departure, but felt it killed the sadness. None of the Smith specials were set-up by the previous episode (but a couple did pick-up fairly quickly afterwards... more or less). And the long breaks in seasons meant they didn't set-up the latter two Capaldi specials, just Last Christmas and Twice Upon a Time.
So... of the fourteen specials, only seven have been set-up.
Sounds right, but then again the last episode of the series seems to generally have more weight to it than that. If not a tie-in to the holiday episode then the death of a companion, a regeneration, or the like. This one was just done. Anticlimactic.

Monday, 17th December, 2018

Reading through, I'm a little irked so much of the rules seem held back for a forthcoming book available in a year or so IF the Kickstarter funds. Especially when half this book was an adventure...
Couldn't they have put all the rules in one book and then done the adventure(s) separately?
Meh. Here's what his website says about the next book:
"Kingdoms & Warfare is a 5th Edition supplement with rules for running countries and organizations like thieves' guilds, churches and wizard colleges, as well as more rules for large scale warfare."
Sounds like a nice follow-up expansion to me and not something I was expecting in the Strongholds and Followers book. The warfare rules in the appendix of this current book are more of a bonus as far as I am concerned.
Also, 50 of the 265 pages are the adventure. An adventure that helps DMs try out the rules as TallIan indicates. More like a fifth than a half of the book, but who's counting...

Reading through, I'm a little irked so much of the rules seem held back for a forthcoming book available in a year or so IF the Kickstarter funds. Especially when half this book was an adventure...
Couldn't they have put all the rules in one book and then done the adventure(s) separately?
The adventure was a stretch goal of the Kickstarter. I think that Matt was trying to ensure the actual goal was reachable by splitting into two sections and underestimated his fan base.
So he was kind of stuck making the adventure.
I do see you point though, but I quite like the look of the adventure as a way to try out the stronghold rules.

The finale was a bit weak for my tastes.
Again, Time Shaw just looks gross and not scary. And the "one cool thing" about his people (their bodies are super cold) doesn't come up. It's rare for individual villains in Doctor Who to be reoccurring rather than villainous species, and Tim Shaw just was not up to snuff to compete with the five or six "evil individuals".
Graham's character arc was nice and his and Ryan's relationship has been tied up nicely. Yaz is still fun but just there more often than not.
One thing seemed to be missing; the connection to the holiday episode. More often than not the last episode of the series shows the direct tie to the the upcoming holiday episode but this one just... ended.

Don’t forget that WotC made Basic D&D available via Print on Demand:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17171/DD-Rules-Cyclopedia-Basic?it=1
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/16989/DMR2-Creature-Catalog-Basic?it=1
If that’s your thing, all the power to you. I will support that. If it works for your table, then that is all that matters.
But if you want something Basic-esque but with a modern twist.... 5e might work.
I would love to play Basic D&D. I started with 1e and never had a chance to see the other stuff. I have flipped through the rules Cyclopedia though and I really like it! Could anyone make a short list of the major differences between the RC and 5e?

So think of it like a different game. Final Fantasy V is ridiculously different from Final Fantasy I.
It doesn’t need to be the same game as Basic or AD&D as those games already exist.
This is what I did. When 5E first came out I was very disappointed.
I love B/X and thought 5E would have options to make it more of a advanced B/X but..it didn't.
Over time however I came to see it as it's own thing and not just a offshoot of my Favorite game but a totally separate game. Once that happened I could play it and run it as it's own thing and stop worrying about why it wasn't right on some issue.
I have loved tons of rpg's that were not D&D. You just need to learn editions for this game sometimes make it a whole different game and take THAT game on it's own merits.

So think of it like a different game. Final Fantasy V is ridiculously different from Final Fantasy I.
It doesn’t need to be the same game as Basic or AD&D as those games already exist.
Interesting idea.

Sunday, 16th December, 2018

Van Richten's Guide to the Horrors
Weird... I was imagining this exact same book earlier today! Same title, roughly the same content... this indicates to me that it's probably too good of an idea to ever actually happen. I'd probably include some character-creation options (e.g. monster-hunter subclasses), and a chapter for the DM on running horror games, since previous WotC forays into this territory have proven extremely fruitful.
But if I had Mearls on the phone, the book I would pitch would be...
Savage Species
160-pages
Price: $39.95
Rules to play all sorts of monsters, not just 1-HD humanoids. Kind of like the 3E Savage Species, but not sucky and terrible. It's notoriously difficult to balance monsters as PCs, but there are numerous DMSGuild products that tackle this issue, some with surprisingly good results. Heck, I made a dragon character class and it didn't turn out too bad.

I think the sorcerer has the same problems as the monk, where they're mathematically balanced but don't feel as good.
Getting that extra cantrip and having the flexibility of metamagic just feels less cool than having the extra spells known that a wizard does. Even if 95% of the time, the sorcerer would be largely as effective as the wizard, who ends up preparing the same spells every day, and the 2-4 more spells the wizard has memorized won't significantly alter a combat or game session.
Yeah, I think it's more about feelings then facts honest.

I think the big rules are:
It needs to take place around Christmas (or otherwise involve Christmas overtly), and the plot would not easily work at another time of year/ holiday.
It needs to have a happy ending and/or positive message
The central theme needs to be one commonly associated with Christmas (miracles/ family/ gift giving/ birth of Jesus Christ)
Thoughts?
I thought the only big rule was "it needs to be a movie that at least one of the big networks will, without fail, put on TV sometime in the latter half of December."
Lethal Weapon has certainly never been broadcast as a Christmas movie, at least not here in the UK. It took this thread to even remind me that it's set during that period.

You do know WotC doesn't publish the Endless Quest books, right? Those are licensed.
And funny thing... you know that generation of casual kids who watched the cartoon and read the EQ books in the '80s grew up to be the hardcore gamers of the 2000s.
Well, yes, precisely on both points. They get money from their licensing partner, and make future customers. Thing is, I probably have enough D&D to last me the rest of my life: I'll probably keep buying, because I have a problem, but it is a better strategy to bet on my son wanting his own PHB someday than me wanting to invest in a new edition.

Very true. I'd forgotten who took the shot.
It was a lovely fake out. Making you think he hadn't completely gone Dark Side and still giving you some hope throughout the movie, only to have him show that he was fully evil and irredeemable at the end.
Fully evil, at least. I don't think he was demonstrably irredeemable.

I'd forgotten that one
That and Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Iron Man 3 really show how much Shane Black likes setting movies at Christmas...
While not a Shane Black, I'd also throw in "The Adventured of Ford Fairlane." Seriously, a major character named "Zuzu Petals"?

Will 5e be the "last" edition of D&D?
Maybe.
It could very well be, as far as we define editions. If they do a 6th Edition or revision, it might be more akin to the 1e/2e split where the content is largely backwards compatible. 6th Edition could be a smaller tweak of an edition, with less substantial changes than we saw in 3.5e. Almost more of a repackaging of the rules with more attention paid to presenting the rules in an easy, accessible format.
I don't see nearly as much pressure on the rules to change or be updated like I saw in 3e or 4e. Fewer people thinking of cracking apart the base system and remaking sweeping sections of the rules. More adjusting smaller subsections, like certain classes.
But there's probably no way 6e will ever be as popular or high selling as 5e is.
Which is fine. D&D does have a big pope/ small pope thing. 1e/ 3e/ 5e are big while 2e/4e were less well received. It makes sense that 6e will be more of a filler era that maintains the company while people keep...

Funny thing... Lego has made a LOT of blunders and had some terrible years.
https://www.businessinsider.com/legos-worst-failures-2014-2
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-lego-made-a-huge-turnaround-2014-2
I know I watched the Lego thing on Netflix (Toys That Made Us?)

...
A couple things. I can't remember clearly, but I don't recall 2E as being not well received. I think it is just that in hindsight, 1E is the defacto "classic AD&D" edition - the Gygaxian tone and anachronisms, the presentation, the original hardcovers, classic modules, etc. Furthermore, a lot of the changes instituted in 2E actually came about late in 1E (e.g. THACO); in a way, 2E was more of a reorganization and tidying up than a new edition - at least in the way that 3E, 4E, and 5E were actually new versions of the game. And in that "tidying up," a lot of the now beloved Gygaxian flavor was washed out, so for us older players (Gen X and older), we think back to 1E more fondly.
As for the idea of having all the content one needs, I think part of the genius of the 5E approach is that the focus is on stories - and there are no end to how many stories the base will need. We might max out on classes and other player options; we might be totally happy with the RAW or our tweaked version; we may ev...

Jester David's Downloads

I made the sheets landscape, with some other changes inspired by the circular design from the playtest.
There are regular character sheets, spell sheets, and an alternate spell sheet with fewer spell levels ...